No news? Let’s make something up!

The Bearded Ones and their manufactured articles.

Clearly the staff cutbacks and merger of the Tennessean into the bowels of the Gannett corporation (USA Today Network – Anywhere) is starting to take its toll on the dynamic duo Boucher & Ebert (not to be confused with Siskel & Ebert).

When we stopped laughing at their hypothesis, a couple of the RTP crew sent the article to friends in DC who, you know, actually have foreign policy experience and the hilarity ensued all over again.

It is true that before Trump was elected, Corker was arguably the highest ranking elected Republican voice in foreign affairs as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But then Trump came along, and Corker was quickly demoted to about 5th place on the foreign affairs pecking order – below the president, the vice-president, the Secretary of State, the head of the National Security Council, the NSA, the CIA, etc. All of these people get to weigh in before anyone even thinks about calling Bob and asking him to bring them pizza.

So when Booger & Ebert write a story with such an absurd premise, then round up a couple of obscure pundits to confirm their inane premise, somehow that’s news? Yeah, fake news.

But not satisfied with their foray into reporting on subject matter for which they are singularly unqualified, Doucher & Ebert returned to something for which they are renowned: manufacturing local political controversy where there is none.

Apparently no longer content to searching through Jeremy Durham’s trash to recover DNA specimens from his discarded boxer shorts, the Bearded Ones ran with a story that alleges Brian Kelsey was laundering state campaign contributions into his failed congressional race. We say “alleged’ because they wrote their story with more “qualifiers” than a regional NCAA track meet. Here are just some of the weasel-word accusations delivered by the Tennessean reporters:

“May have broken the law”

“possible issues”

“hint at”

“If….then”

“don’t necessarily imply wrongdoing”

“seemingly coordinate”

“Investigators may be interested”

Whew! It “appears likely” these “reporters” “may have seemingly” pulled this story right out of their “possible” asses. For good measure they trotted out a liberal “expert” who use to work for the far-left Center for Media and Democracy – an outfit whose default agenda is to find vast right-wing conspiracies under every rock.

All they left out of the story was that the Russians were somehow involved.

They start their story with $106,000 that Kelsey donated to a PAC. Of course, when you do the math, they could only account for $66,000 that they said “might” have been routed through other PACs to benefit Kelsey’s congressional bid. What happened to the other $40,000, geniuses? Or did that not fit your narrative? Apparently, if Kelsey gave money to a PAC, which gave it to another PAC, who gave to an independent expenditure committee who then took out mailings and ads to benefit a candidate, that that is somehow wrong.

Funny, we didn’t see these paragons of public virtue get their panties all bunched up and condemn Bill Haslam for DOING THE SAME DAMN THING with the Advance TN PAC a couple of years ago. But then doing so would have been real reporting – as opposed to contrived reporting meant to promote or protect their liberal agenda.

This calls for another investigation! Somebody call James Comey. We hear he’s looking for work these days. And the Bearded Ones could write – or “more likely” — concoct another another manufactured story.